Ironman 70.3 Racine - Triathlon1/2 Ironman

The swim was a good time. Water temp was perfect. Slotted myself right at the front way to the right, just left of Troy Jacobson. I wanted to be in the front for two reasons (1) to get clean water to start and (2) to have the opportunity to pick and choose which swimmers I'd like to draft off of as they swam past me. Catching the feet of a faster swimmer is much easier to do when they are behind you then when they are in front of you. (ha ha ha).

It was shallow for quite a bit out to the first buoy so we ran in about 25 yards and then dolphin dived for another 25-50yards, then started to swim. Right after the 1st buoy I picked my first pair of feet as the swam past and locked onto them for about 1/3 of the swim. I was like, damn, this is SSSWWWEEETTTT...but then for no apparent reason he pulled up and started to breast stroke. Damn. Began to just power through the water myself when another swimmer started to pass me so I locked onto his feet and it was perfect! I wasn't swimming at 100% effort but hey, I had an awesome draft that was pretty close to (but a little faster) than I could have swam alone so I knew I was better off just going sub 100% effort and hanging with him. His draft was so awesome we had like 2-3 other guys besides me forming a diamond shape around him. It was too funny. He was in front, I was on his left at calf level, another guy was on his right at calf level, then there would be guys popping in and out of the draft us three made, directly behind. I bet from a helicopter it looked like an arrow pointing directly straight. It was fun. I never left the guy's feet because he was on fire that day...sighted perfectly. I kinda felt like one of those fish you see on TV that swim next to sharks for protection...I kept thinking of that the entire time I was swimming...too funny. I just kept watching his left calf for the majority of the time but every now and again I would double check his sighting ability and I sighted too just to make sure I didn't get caught like the last time where i followed a guy all the way in the wrong direction ASSUMING he was swimming straight (trust but verify). Nope, this guy was right on target...sweet. He was Bib #322. Shout out to you bro! Thanks for the lift. He smoked me through the sand and into T1 but I wasn't in a big rush so I let him go once we got upright.

Nothing...well, maybe try to draft off of Troy Jacobson next time, but I lost him in the dolphin dives at the beginning of the race.

This transition was bad but I wasn't trying hard at all to be fast. I lollygagged around and enjoyed the day. I really didn't have this race pegged as one I wanted "race" it was more just for fun.

Not much, maybe eat a char cheddar cheese dog and some fries. :)

Wow, this bike surprised me. 3 weeks ago I rode this course and held 85% of FTP with no problem the entire ride and ran off the bike very well but today it wasn't happening. I attribute this to a dramatic loss of fitness since I only rode my bike one other time in 3 weeks leading up to the race. I didn't really let it get to me because I knew I was not training for this race but just signed up for it to participate and have fun, see old friends, and enjoy the day. However, I was pretty surprised when I couldn't hold power as much as I thought. I had to drop pretty low off my FTP for about 2/3 of the ride; which had a HUGE effect on my bike split. Oh well, it was an awesome ride except for that. Oh, I did have to take my powertap computer off its mount so that it would get jettisoned from the bumpy roads...I did this in about 3 sections just to make sure I didn't have to go chase it. Also, I had to go to the bathroom so bad by mile 20...but didn't want to stop and couldn't go on the bike...not sure why, maybe stage fright (I was able to go on the bike at IMKY). I was surprised I was able to hold it for 2 hours.

One thing that was a TOTAL rookie mistake was that when I cleaned my rear cassette and reassembled it, I accidentally switched the 12 and 13 tooth cogs so my cassette went like this on race day; 11-13-12-14-15-16, etc. Man, that proved to be a pain because I was very frequently in the 13 and 14 cog and figuring out the right shifting patter to move from one to the other and back again was like doing calculus or differential equations...I just couldn't figure it out quickly enough and always shifted to the 12 or 11 instead of the 13 and 14. whoops. :)

Put my rear cassette back together properly...I mean I've only done it like 30 times before. Also, not be so surprised at the amount of fitness I loose by only riding my bike twice in 3 weeks. :)

this transition time was exactly 1 minute too slow because i went to the bathroom and couldn't stop! I mean I must have had like a gallon of water in my...crazy!

well i was prepared to go in the hurt locker as I only ran once a week for 3 months leading up to this race so not much to be expected from Steveo. I just wanted to get out there and test my mental mettle. First loop was fine, got poured on as the 1st loop ended. I totally forgot my watch at home probably because I didn't care about this race and didn't make any lists like I usually do and didn't pack for it until 30 min before I went to bed the night before...so I had no idea what my splits were so I decided to just keep my effort high. I ran so that my breathing was labored enough so that I had to breath in every other time my right foot hit the ground...this seemed to be the right effort level and just below what felt like lactate threshold. It worked ok, but damn my paces felt SSSLLLLOOOWWWW...but I kept reminding myself I didn't train for this so don't worry about pace, just focus on effort. My lack of normal breakfast finally caught up to me at mile 4 of the run. I was STARVING!! Holy moly, I could eat like 3 big macs I was so hungry. Good thing was I didn't bonk, but damn, I was so hungry it was crazy. So I finally gave in at mile 9 and ate 2 cookies and 4 pretzels....yummie! As soon as I did that it was like a bolt of lightening hit me and I felt like $1 million bucks, my speed shot up immediately and I was running much faster, around 7:15min/miles based on what if felt like and I was on FIRE!! I was thinking to myself, man, I should have ate breakfast. Then the trouble started...about 3/4 of a mile later my stomach had the bright idea that it needed blood from my muscles to digest my food (stupid stomach...couldn't it just wait). I knew this would happen but I was so hungry I didn't care at the time I choose to eat the crap I ate (i.e. cookies and pretzels). Once my stomach started to digest the food, the energy was sapped out of me and I was back down to a snails pace. Ugh. I was so lame, I couldn't even kick it in for the final 1-2 miles, no matter how hard I tried. Ugh. Oh well, whatever.

EAt breakfast. Duh.

Breakfast.


I thoroughly enjoyed doing this race despite my lack of training because I really didn't go into this racing wanting to "race" it. I was actually more excited/anxious about this race that my first HIM I did years ago because I didn't train for this one and was very very interested to see what would happen to me if I did the race with no/minimal training. I was my own experiment. Quite frankly, training an avg of 5 hours a week for only 3 months for this race and coming out of it with a 5.5 hr time....I'm very surprised that I didn't fall apart and get some worse time. My bike split wasn't that bad and my run split wasn't horrendous based on the amount of training I did. Maybe I do one of these with absolutely no training and really get in the hurt locker. :)